Here are the gel pad and finger sleeve Kobe Bryant is using this season to protect his right index finger. KEVIN DING, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

LOS ANGELES – Kobe Bryant has come up with a neat little triangle of his own to determine what three qualities make up a great team: intensity, toughness and unselfishness.

"We have all three," Bryant said.

Victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves being a certainty Tuesday night, the Lakers will be 8-0 – a better start than any previous Phil Jackson-coached Lakers team, and there have been a few good ones. (In fact, the only Lakers team to start faster is the 1997-98 team that went 11-0 in Year 2 of Shaq & Kobe. But it won only four of its next nine.)

Pau Gasol has been the NBA MVP, Lamar Odom an All-Star and Ron Artest the Defensive Player of the Year. New addition Steve Blake played savior with his hero shot on ring night. And no one has used the words "Andrew Bynum," "knee" and "setback" in the same sentence.

What could possibly be better for the Lakers?

Well, Bryant could be.

It'd be even better for the Lakers if Bryant wasn't deficient on defense and on offense shooting worse at 44.2 percent from the field and 32.1 percent on 3-pointers than his career numbers.

It'd be really nice if Bryant didn't have to pull down that protective sleeve over his (thrice) surgically repaired right knee and get an ice wrap during the first quarter.

What would be unreal would be if Bryant wasn't facing the prospect of playing the rest of his career with a thing on his arthritic right index finger.

Yet the beauty of Bryant in recent years has been his ability to use that index finger to take the pulse of the team and react accordingly. He is Tarantino, doing decisive directing most of the time and opting for reservoir digs when he senses the team needs more from him. Bryant is largely staying off stage now, both he and Jackson having referred to Bryant's state of play as "cruise control."

For all the talk about the knee, it is getting there and will get there. The finger won't heal, as arthritis has settled into the middle knuckle on Bryant's forefinger – meaning it hurts and is going to hurt a lot of the time. Over the summer Bryant refused rather radical finger surgery that would've cost him part of this season.

Even on this very sore spot, though, the Lakers can't complain. Bryant got banged on the finger twice Wednesday night in Sacramento and managed to shake it off and keep playing. That was indeed the night he had 30 points, 10 rebounds, 12 assists and one turnover.

Bryant's finger is also good enough to get by without nearly as much assistance as last season, when he suffered an avulsion fracture on Dec. 11 when the Timberwolves were also in town. Bryant needed all his daughters' hair clips and bobby pins, a carton of athletic tape and all the magic of Lakers trainer Gary Vitti and MacGyver to form a splint that could effectively support his poor finger through games.

This season? Bryant places a sticker with gel padding one-eighth of an inch thick on his afflicted knuckle. The sticker is the exact same size and shape of a 50-cent piece, and the pad absorbs the brunt of the blow when Bryant's finger is inevitably whacked or banged.

To keep the pad in place, Bryant wears a finger sleeve not quite two inches long. It is made of thick cloth material that has enough elasticity to allow for finger movement – the novelty touches being No. 24 stitched on it and a pull tab to help him get it on.

That's it. The goal is to maintain natural movement while offering protection so that the expected abuse the finger endures doesn't cause a lot of swelling that makes it harder for Bryant to manage it.

Having tried the two-piece contraption on – albeit without posting any triple-doubles – I can offer that it's quite comfortable and not restrictive. Bryant can feel the basketball with the tip of his finger and get a pretty natural bend to match the shape of the ball.

It's certainly not ideal to have even one and seven-eighths of your index finger not in direct contact with the full-grain leather of the basketball – and it is not difficult to notice instances where the finger hampers Bryant's ball handling. But it's not too bad as far as protective devices go – if it can do its job over the long haul.

With it, Bryant took over often enough in his few training-camp practices that no one with the Lakers was surprised when more takeovers happened in a couple games. Until his 12-point, three-turnover clunker against Portland on Sunday night (and the Lakers still won by 25), Bryant had been solid – scoring at least 20 points in each of the first six games. So had Gasol – the first time two teammates started a season each reaching 20 points like that in 31 years. (George Gervin and Larry Kenon were last to do it.)

Gasol (24.1 points per game so far) won't outscore Bryant (22.9) over the long haul. But Gasol owes Bryant more than a few after Bryant carried the Lakers out of the gate a year ago while Gasol rested his sore hamstring.

In the end, Bryant proved last season that he can get points – and an NBA Finals MVP trophy and NBA championship – with a fractured, swollen, splinted, taped and downright ugly pointer on his shooting hand.

Although he hasn't proved much this season, the trigger finger does look more like a weapon again.

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